100 SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF 



Apply the remedy thoroughly during two successive years, and you 

 have utterly routed the enemy, and this is more especially the case 

 where an orchard is not in too close proximity to the timber, or to 

 slovenly neighbors. Fail to apply the remedy, and the enemy will, 

 in all probability, rout you. The reason is simple. The female being 

 wingless, the insect is very local in its attacks, sometimes swarming 

 in one orchard and being unknown in another which is but a mile 

 away. Thus, after it is once exterminated, a sudden invasion is not 

 to be expected, as in the case of the Tent Caterpillar, and of many 

 other orchard pests ; but when it has once obtained a footing in an 

 orchard, it multiplies the more rapidly, for the very reason that it does 

 not spread fast. 



If oil troughs are used, it will be found much safer, and surer to 

 sink them in the ground close around the butt of the tree, instead of 

 winding them around the trunk higher up. There will then be no 

 chance for the young worms to get up between the trough and the 

 tree. But it follows, that this plan can only be adopted in an orchard 

 which is kept perfectly clean. 



As for muriate of lime, which has been so earnestly recom- 

 mended as a preventive, by interested parties, here is what Mr. San- 

 ford Howard says of it in the Western Rural of August 18th, 1866, 

 and Mr. Joseph Breck, editor of the old American Journal of Horti- 

 culture ; G. C. Bracket t, correspondent of the Maine Farmer, and 

 several other persons with whom I am acquainted, all testify, after 

 having thoroughly tried it, to its utter worthlessness for this purpose : 



The editor of the Fanner says, there are statements to the effect, 

 that a substance called Gould's Muriate of Lime, applied to the soil 

 in autumn, had entirely prevented the subsequent appearance of 

 Canker-worms on trees standing on the ground, although the trees had 

 previously been much damaged by the insect. It is also stated that 

 on other trees, not ten rods distant, where none of the so-called mu- 

 riate of lime was applied, the worms were very destructive. 



I cannot think that this amounts to any proof that the substance 

 applied destroyed the worms, or had any effect on them. The non- 

 appearance of the insect in the case alluded to, was probably due to 

 other causes. If this substance will kill or injure the insect in any 

 of its stages, it would be easy to prove it by a direct application to 

 soil containing insects, in a box. Several years ago, I took pains to 

 make a particular experiment with this so-called muriate of lime, the 

 result of which was that the Canker-worm underwent its transforma- 

 tions naturally, and to all appearance healthfully, in a soil composed 

 of nearly fifty per cent, of the articles of which it was said a small 

 proportion only was necessary to totally destroy them ? If the sub- 

 stance is the same in composition now that it was then, it is reasona- 

 ble to suppose that the result of its application would be the same. 



As to the " Plug Ugly Theory," which consists of filling an auger 

 bore with sulphur and plugging it tight, and which originated, some 

 years since, in the inventive brain of some Prairie Farmer corres- 

 pondent; it is altogether too absurd to need consideration, for even 

 if the mode of application were not so downright ridiculous, it is well 



